Google has shown its own figures for how long it takes to crawl, index and reflect changes in search results. Gary Illyes presented them on October 2, 2026 in Barcelona, according to attendees and photos of his slides. Typical times: about 20 hours to discover a new URL, and 3 to 6 months to recover from a core update.
What we know
- Who and where: Gary Illyes of Google, on day three of Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe in Barcelona, on October 2, 2026, according to the recap by John Campbell of ROAST, who attended.
- What he showed: slides for each stage: crawling, indexing and serving. Each process has a minimum, a typical and a maximum time. Search Engine Roundtable published three photos on October 5.
- Where the numbers come from: the footer of the slides says they are estimates based on internal analysis.
- Google's caveat: Illyes told Search Engine Roundtable it was "an exercise" to see whether the audience could relate to the numbers.
- Delays stack up: according to Campbell, Illyes warned that the processes are linked: a page cannot be indexed until it has been crawled.
- What is missing: Google has not published the slides or any text of its own with these figures. Its Search Central blog and its documentation changelog had nothing on October 5.
The figures that can be read in the photos of the slides:
| Process | Typical | Slowest |
|---|---|---|
| Discovering a new URL | About 20 hours | Weeks to never |
| Recrawling a known URL | About 30 days | Weeks to never |
| Processing a sitemap | About 24 hours | Up to 14 days or never (quality) |
| robots.txt update | About 24 hours | 25 hours |
| Indexing, end to end | About 1.5 hours | Months or never (quality) |
| Title update | 1-2 days | Several weeks to months |
| Snippet update | 1-2 days | Several weeks to months |
| Owner removal in Search Console | About 2 hours | 24 hours |
| Manual action removal | 1-2 weeks | 4-6 weeks or much longer |
| Recovering from a core update | 3-6 months | 6 months to 1 year |
| Change after a spam update | 1-2 weeks | Months |
Campbell's transcription adds rows that are not in those photos. One of them is a site move: 1 to 3 months typical, and 6 months to more than a year at the slow end.
What changes and what doesn't
Nothing changes in how Google works, and there is no new guideline. What is new is that Google has put numbers on something its documentation describes loosely. The official help says crawling can take from a few days to a few weeks. It also says that after a core update its systems may need several months. The slides point the same way and make it concrete.
These are not guaranteed deadlines. They are ranges, and the word "never" shows up in several rows, twice next to the word "quality". Search Engine Journal notes that the sample size and the period measured are not known, and that nobody has defined "typical". Treat them as a reference, not a promise.
How to use these numbers on your site
- New page. Give it a day before you worry. Check it with URL Inspection in Search Console. Asking for a recrawl several times does not make it faster, Google's help says.
- Sitemap. Submit it and allow a day. If it still has not been read after two weeks, look for errors in the file.
- robots.txt. Google refreshes its cached copy every 24 hours, according to its documentation. If you blocked something by mistake, fix it and request a recrawl from the robots.txt report.
- Title or description. Do not judge a change until two days have passed.
- Server. On the crawling slide, crawl capacity drops in seconds when Google backs off and can take 1 to 3 weeks to recover. According to Campbell, that happens for example when your server struggles. Check host status under Settings > Crawl stats.
- Domain or URL migration. Plan it in months, not days. Google's documentation asks you to keep redirects for at least a year.
- Traffic drop after a core update. Measure improvement by quarters. With 3 to 6 months as the typical time, a fix made this week may not show until 2027.
Related: Google Rolls Out the September 2026 Spam Update
Sources
- Search Engine Roundtable, October 5, 2026, with photos of Google's slides
- ROAST, day three recap by John Campbell, October 2, 2026
- Google Search Central, announcement of the Barcelona event
- Google, "Ask Google to recrawl your URLs"
- Google, "Google Search's Core Updates and Your Website"
- Google, "How to move a site"
- Google, "Update your robots.txt file"
- Search Engine Journal, October 4, 2026
Updates: if Google publishes the slides or a documentation page with these figures, it will be added here with its link.